


The Naivete of Predators

by plasma_in_ink



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Genre: Dark, Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Not that it's going to stick, Villain Protagonist, this is ghost trick after all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 21:51:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21125813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plasma_in_ink/pseuds/plasma_in_ink
Summary: Sometimes, saving a life isn't a net gain. Not if you save the wrong life. The consequences of such an action can be difficult to predict... Which begs the question - is there such a thing as a wrong life?Sissel may have found one.





	The Naivete of Predators

“Heh. Silly girl, going in before she was sure about it. She deserved what she got.” The woman laughed as she watched the final seconds of the scene slow to a stop.

“Hey,” said a cat. He was small and dark, with a red bandana around his neck. He blinked at her, and the woman thought it was probably supposed to be strange that she was talking to a cat. Or, even, that they weren’t in the physical world. The physical world was out there, as stilled and lifeless as the young woman who had just bled out, broken on the sidewalk below. However, the woman decided not to worry about the strangeness. “You know that’s you down there, right?”

“Then, again, I deserve what I got.” She stuck her tongue out at the scene, still grinning, unworried - she thought she probably didn’t worry much about anything, as a rule, though she didn’t remember anything about herself all. The woman had figured as much. “What an Idiot!”

_“She’s one cold customer.”_ The cat said quietly, _“Why was she here in this building, anyway? What was she doing?”_

That she was dead didn’t bother her, and even she was a little surprised about that. “Beats me.” She said, to, apparently, the cat’s chagrin, “And I’ll take that as a compliment.” She felt empty… but somehow, the thought that it was over made her feel a little bit of warmth that she couldn’t identify. It could have been relief. It could have been regret. She wasn’t too concerned with that right now. “If I get to be an ice queen in death, then that just means I’m not falling to pieces…” She broke out into a raucous storm of laughter. It felt good to laugh - “Ice Queen… pfffff…”

“Well, don’t get used to it.” The cat said, putting a paw out as if to step forward. The woman felt the strange spirit world (at least, that was her guess) lurch around her as the ‘real world’ began to fade into reddish droplets of light. “You won’t be dead for long.”

“What?” she stopped laughing just enough to smirk at the cat, “Look, I hate to break it to you, but dead things stay dead. Doesn’t matter if you’re the grim kitty reaper or whatever you are…” she snickered, “You can’t change death.”

“I’ll take that… as a challenge! Let’s go back... ” For a brief moment, the woman thought she knew exactly what the expression ‘like the cat who ate the canary’ meant, "To four minutes before your death!" Then the scene dissolved, and she felt herself pulled back in time, drawn by little cat feet…

*****

The woman, sometimes called Callisto Yew, sometimes called by other names of her choosing, felt very _strange_. Very strange, indeed, and not just because she was surrounded by the moaning bodies – make that dead _bodies_, as she finished the last of them off with a quiet pop of her silenced pistol - of a diverse group of well-dressed and well-armed thugs. She really hated wetwork, but that also wasn’t the source of her unease.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, obviously – just an in-and-out job, steal and wheel, whatever the kids were calling it these days. But someone had tipped the target off, and that target had wanted to send a message – one loaded with with bullets - to her client. Sometimes that happened, and Callisto cursed herself for being unprepared for that eventuality.

She knew for a fact that, even with her experience, reflexes, and training that she would have been killed not too far from her entry point. Killed, if not for the lights sparking out dramatically, startling the thugs, and giving her enough time to shoot her way out.

The gunfire had drawn attention, trapping her in the dim, emergency-lit hallway with thugs (not just men, she was pleased to note, points to the target for being an equal opportunity employer) bearing down on her. There had been no cover. There had been many, many near misses. She was sure that one of the hail of bullets would have definitely hit its mark and killed her, then and there, if one of the thug’s tasers hadn’t gone off and zapped him. And then, randomly, a large wastebasket had hurtled full-speed down the hall and crashed into the other thug. Callisto hadn’t had time to think about how strange it was. She had been in full danger-mode, thinking about whether she needed to bail out. She’d decided against it, of course – the money she was getting for this job was well worth the risk. And, with the chaos, she had enough of an opening to move forward.

So she did, and once moving, she found her target right away – a large clay vase, surprisingly sturdy and African in design. Not her taste, but who was she to judge? There was, she knew somehow, a data drive inside – probably the true target because she had a feeling that it wasn’t her client’s taste either. She had no way of knowing this, of course. The vase was intact, and a peek inside garnered only a reddish-sort of darkness.

And yet, she did know about this memory device, with a strange sort of clarity.

Weird.

Callisto hugged the vase to her chest and stepped over the rubble of a massive hunting trophy… and the body crushed beneath it. That thug had come from nowhere, but so had the hunting trophy. It was a stroke of luck that it had come down when it did – weirdness and luck. What else, Callisto wondered, would the night bring?

She opened the window, ignoring the alarm sirens blaring behind her. She had no desire to meet more thugs – she had her target, and it was time to get out and find out who had gotten a hold of her plans. They’d been secret – was she bugged? By who? How?

Many questions were in need of answering tonight, and she wasn’t going to answer them if she was dead or in custody. She attached her grappling rope and, holding the vase tightly, belayed quickly out of the window. It was a well-practiced and controlled fall, and she landed right in the covered spot she’d scoped out… but not without a small thud. For a moment, she froze, the idea of danger thrilling her deliciously, an intense copper taste on her tongue.

But no danger came, and she scurried off to her hidden getaway car.

There were questions that needed to be answered, and somehow, she knew she was fortunate to be able to answer them. _This is a night to remember…_ she thought, faltering slightly as a small black kitten crossed her path. It looked at her with bright yellow eyes and stared.

Yeah. _Fortunate._

_“What have you done?!” _The cat said in her mind. Callisto wasn’t expecting it – she nearly dropped the target item – but the utter horror in the cat’s tone made her giggle a little. The two actions, both stifled in the city quiet, helped her balance out.

“I landed on my feet, kitty cat,” she said, shifting the vase in her arms as she walked up to him. She gave him a scratch on the head.

_“You killed all of those people…_” he said, softly, accepting the attention and leaning into it somewhat reluctantly. His fur was soft, but he felt eerily cold to the touch.

“Sure. It was them or me.”

_“If I hadn’t saved you…”_ Suddenly, Callisto remembered the events, the strange alternate realities existing together in that bizarre ghostly space. She had died that night. She’d watched the cat twist reality to undo her death. And she’d lived it, as the cat barreled towards a man with a trash can. She giggled again at the thought – that had been very amusing!

“They would’ve gone home to their mommies tonight,” she finished his sentence, sneering, withdrawing her hand from his little head, “What? Having regrets?”

The cat was silent. He stared at her, for a long and uncomfortable moment, with his bright, yellow, very intelligent eyes. _“I think I understand him a little more.”_

“What was that?” she asked, curious. She realized, momentarily, that she didn’t have to speak out loud. Of course - the conversation happened with thought, or souls, or something. Not needing to talk, she resumed her movement, the cat following behind.

“_Nothing. Humans are strange, that is all.”_ He said, stopping after a moment and growing more distant as she found her hidden car. He turned away from her and flicked his tail. _“Take care of yourself,”_ he said, vanishing into the shadows of the city night.

Callisto sat down in the car and started the engine. It roared to life, the glare of headlights throwing the hedge in front of her into high relief. “Oh, I always do.” She said, bursting into full laughter, raucous and gleeful, as she made her escape.


End file.
